Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) regulated or commonly defined landfill leachates are the percolation and runoff or multi-contaminate containing discharge that occurs from and within RCRA regulated sites or landfills. This defined leachate is highly contaminated and typically includes large amounts of dissolved and undissolved organic matter, inorganic matter, heavy metals and a host of other known and unknown but regulated contaminants. This defined leachate or all other defined wastewaters are generally extremely regulated by federal, state and local governments and their constituent environmental agencies and citizen legal groups. These institutions have declared RCRA regulated sites or landfill leachate, and all other defined wastewaters, to be a threat to local rivers, streams and soils, as well as municipal water supplies and ground water located in the general vicinity of RCRA regulated sites or landfills or all other regulated and defined wastewater generating sites.
Offsite transportation, management, treatment and disposal of RCRA regulated site or landfill leachate and all other declared or defined wastewaters are expensive and inefficient. Typically RCRA regulated and defined leachates and all other defined wastewaters are collected and may be transported off-site to a treatment facility or regulated under NPDES permits or Land Application (LA) permits. RCRA regulated leachates and all other defined wastewaters are typically collected in lined or unlined ponds or tanks and may be transferred to trucks that transport the defined leachate and all other defined wastewaters to prepared defined leachate or wastewater treatment plants or simply discharged into the environment under regulated or permitted conditions. It is the management, permitting, collection, transportation and treatment that make the process extremely expensive. It is not unusual for a typical sized RCRA regulated site or landfill, or all other regulated and defined wastewater producing site, to spend approximately $1 million dealing with the defined leachate or all other defined wastewaters either on or off site, annually.